National Archives and Records Administration College Park, Maryland

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is charged with collecting and preserving documents considered important to the nation, which range from the founding documents to daily federal business records. It’s original home in a neoclassical temple-like building near the Mall in Washington DC, opened in 1937, and reached capacity by the 1960s. After years of storage of additional material at off site warehouses and rented spaces, the Archives opened its new site in the suburbs at College Park in 1994, where it holds and processes the bulk of the National Archives’ important documents, generated in the 20^th and 21st centuries. It also has vaults that store some especially important artifacts. 80% of the archives are said to be accessible to the public, with the rest remaining classified or restricted to officially cleared users. The National Archives also operates 18 Federal Records Centers, some of which are located in underground facilities in the Midwest, most of which collect records for different regions of the USA, and which store things like federal employee records, military service-member information, federal court records, and federal tax information. Some of this information is temporary, and is disposed when it is required to be. Other off-site National Archive facilities include 15 official presidential library archives, and 13 Regional Research Centers, located across the USA.